This is an assertion you’ve likely seen normies argue before. When called into question whether sites have a responsibility, as they say, to remove unfavorable posts or individuals, the normie will cite how large platforms depend on advertising to keep operations afloat. They go on to insist that if unsavory opinions (free speech, in sober parlance) are allowed to remian, then advertisers will pull their precious ads and send the big, poor site into collapse. “Oh no!! What are we to do?!” “Those poor advertisers!”
Their rhetoric likely sits somewhere downstream from corporate spellcasting of large social networking sites aiming to preserve their hegemony. It’s like a revised tactic of blame shifting. As though being beholden to an outside party somehow justifies the exclusion of individuals or of their ideas. Or as though the arrangement couldn’t possibly not involve said outside party.
First problem; why, if you care at all about human freedom of expression (spoiler: normies don’t), are you relying upon a site which places itself at the whims of corporate ad networks? Are you a mosochist? Second, why are you frequenting any site that sees fit to assail their visitors with ads at all? There is hardly a more substantial red flag which signals just how poorly a site regards their visitors.
It is as though the normie cannot even conceive of any different hosting model. I suspect that they cling to this retort as a sort of rationalization for their continued use of a space dominated by corporate-private censorship. Explaining it away and deferring any self responsibility is way easier than adhering to principles and rejecting the use of popular, convenient sites. To avoid the exertion involved with discovering and migrating to greener pastures. Or to avoid the responsibility of self hosting their own community spaces, which would be the most optimal path.
In fact, this situation only emphasizes the criticality of taking charge with self hosted infrastructure wherever free expression is at stake. Leaving the fox to guard the hen house is only a gaurantee that a community will be made to submit to external influence. As I write in Asymmetry of Digital Literacy…, there are certain demographics who seem content to hop from one adversary controlled infrastructure to the next, getting thoroughly beat down each time and seemingly learning nothing from the experience. And now with a “good guy” (Big air quotes) having taken the helm of twitter, fools are flooding back to it believing that the new management will have no thoughts of mistreating them as before. Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
In a way, the normie isn’t entirely wrong. The people running their playpens maintain the technical capacity to censor. And, so long as they choose to continue down the path of the ad supported model, will always be under the thumb of sugar daddy ad networks. May you reap what you sow.